Widespread use of frequencies in the infrared band for communication by telemetry has been made. Using an infrared signal in a business or household environment, however, has been hampered by the large amount of background infrared radiation present. Thus, the uses of infrared communications has been limited to remote control devices for home entertainment systems and the like which are required to communicate a relatively small set of codes with significant redundancy, and do not require the ability to communicate large amounts of digital data at a high rate of speed.
The problem of using infrared communication systems for high speed digital communications is further complicated by the desire to transmit data between battery operated hand-held devices, and a host computer system. These battery operated devices must be able to communicate with relatively low power consumption, therefore, making long high power infrared communication signals impractical.
Therefore, it is desirous to have an infrared communication system, which utilizes relatively low power and communicates data at a high rate of speed, sufficient for transferring files of digital information between the hand-held computer and a host system.